Show Notes
On this episode of Huntavore, Nick is joined by Kriss Abigail, Wildgame butcher and meat cutter, whose passionate about connecting hunters with their harvest. Kriss shares her past and upbringing which ties directly into her profession. Photographer gone Butcher, meat is more then just food to Kriss, its a snapshot of the animal that now gets honored by every meal made. We unpack why Thanksgiving is special to both of us, explore her brand “Meet Your Meat”, and finish out with a super easy marinade to use on some heart tacos. A very thankful chat on this episode of Huntavore.
Nick and Kriss Abigail explore the themes of gratitude, cultural heritage, and the journey into butchery. They discuss the significance of Thanksgiving, the influence of family traditions, and the importance of honoring the animals that provide sustenance. Kriss shares her personal journey from photography to butchery, emphasizing the connection between hunters and their food. The conversation highlights the need for educated consumers in the hunting community and the value of individual processing over batch processing. In this conversation, Nick Otto and Kriss Abigail explore the deep emotional connections that hunters have with their craft, the importance of understanding where our food comes from, and the role of hunting in conservation and community building. Kriss shares her journey in creating 'Meet Your Meat', an initiative aimed at educating people about butchery and the relationship between hunters and their food. They discuss the empowerment of novice hunters, the significance of stewardship in hunting, and how the act of hunting can foster a sense of purpose and community through shared meals and experiences.
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Show Transcript
Kriss Abigail (00:01.336)
Sounds great.
Nick Otto (00:03.464)
Well, hey folks, beautiful evening here in Michigan. Hey, I'm coming to you. This is actually going to be dropping on Thanksgiving. So, hey folks, happy Thanksgiving. Even though the recording of this is happening a week before, I myself have got a lot to be thankful for. The whitetail season here in Michigan for me personally has been ones of a lot of downs, just...
time getting into the field has not been there. We've been busy with the boys, doing their multiple sports. You've actually heard me say that a couple of times. And as much as I love watching my boys flourish in their element of being on the field and excelling as their team and, and athletically just being, amazing to watch. I did miss being out in the field with the archery equipment. I had a couple opportunities.
but they were even iffy opportunities, not a lot of like send the arrow type stuff. So had to ride through that. EHD hit the farm. So it's been low numbers anyway, but as of last night, I connected on a great big Michigan dough. Very, very excited about that. it was just a couple shoot. want to say probably 15, 20 minutes before it was going to be shut down time.
I had her in another one come walking by at 60 yards. had switched equipment over to the eight 70. I had the shotgun, put it right there on the front shoulder, gave her one punch. Bam goes off. ran 60 yards and she just tipped over there. saw her crash just a well up of an emotions. And I know there's a lot of people that are like, well, it's just a dough.
This was definitely not a just a dull moment. This has been my season right here in just one hunt, to see her crash, to call up the family and hear my boys like blow up. They were in the van with mom at that point. So I call them and said, Hey boys, I got a deer and you could just hear them just hooting and hollering. They were excited for me.
Kriss Abigail (02:15.854)
Thank
Nick Otto (02:16.67)
You know, I get all the shakes that you get off any deer coming close, even the big bucks. Like I still had all those emotions, all the shakes. had to wait to be able to get out of the tree and get a chance to text all the buddies. They were all happy for me too. So all in all, it was an amazing night. a lot to be thankful for. and continuing on with that, thanks. was able to get Chris Abigail on the show tonight. Chris.
Thank you for taking some time to step away and just have a conversation. Currently right now, like we were just talking, your Buffalo Bills are playing. So I am really sorry to pull you away from, the TV. But as we were talking back and forth, kind of going along with just temperatures falling, football, this season of Thanksgiving, as we were going back and forth, you were reminiscing a little bit that Thanksgiving too is one of your favorite holidays.
Kriss Abigail (02:54.732)
You
Nick Otto (03:12.1)
Unpack that a little bit. What makes Thanksgiving, why does Thanksgiving top your list?
Kriss Abigail (03:21.518)
Well, gratitude mostly, you know, that's a big top of our list. I grew up in a family. My parents immigrated from El Salvador when I was about a year old to Chicago. so Thanksgiving for us became a moment to be grateful for the new country we're living in, the new lives we get, the new opportunities to express, you know, just to express the moment of gratitude and
So I grew up with Thanksgiving being this big celebration of thanks. It didn't have the commercialism of Christmas or the needing of gifts or things like that. It really was just a moment to celebrate yourself and your family. And I would wait all year to think about what I was going to say at the Thanksgiving table. We would go around. And my father is a chef. He really ignited.
my passion for the culinary world, which you know, we'll get into what that's part of the reason I became a butcher. And so that really, it really made Thanksgiving very important to me, you know, this sense of just giving thanks for where we are and the opportunities that have been given to us. And so my father would make a big
a traditional Salvadorian meal. So I never actually had cranberry sauce or mashed potatoes until I was well into adulthood. But we sure had a delicious turkey every year and we had our version of stuffings and side dishes and things like that. So for me, Thanksgiving is the ultimate melding of the two cultures that I came from. I grew up in an all-American cave in Chicago.
Nick Otto (04:55.966)
You
Kriss Abigail (05:17.71)
but in a very immigrant Latino household. So Thanksgiving has always just been very special to me because of that. Yeah.
Nick Otto (05:26.45)
That is an incredible story, Chris, to be like first generation and to really be first generation immigrant and then to be able to really celebrate that thanks of the family that is here and being able to be together. So that that's a powerful story, Chris. Thank you for sharing that. So, yeah, diving a little bit more into you, Chris Abigail again, she is from Texas.
Kriss Abigail (05:34.861)
Yeah.
Kriss Abigail (05:39.758)
Mm-hmm.
Kriss Abigail (05:44.956)
Thank you. Absolutely.
Nick Otto (05:53.682)
I was just getting a little bit out of her. She's a meat cutter at Alamo meat market and provisions. And she's also got her own, own brand she's been working on with meet your meat, which I find very fascinating. Chris, tell us a little bit about now your background into, into meat cutting, into butchery. You mentioned a little bit, your father has a huge influence on that. How did you get into cutting up animals?
Kriss Abigail (05:54.146)
Yes.
Kriss Abigail (06:00.248)
Mm-hmm.
Kriss Abigail (06:10.494)
Thank you.
Kriss Abigail (06:15.917)
Okay.
Kriss Abigail (06:24.494)
okay. So it's, it will take the long way around to this story. so in Chicago, where I had spent my entire childhood, you know, I had no exposure to nature. didn't really know hunting. I had no idea that this world that I not occupy existed in the way that it does. I very much believe the narrative of hunting is barbaric, you know, it's dirty, it's backwards. No civilized person does it, right? Couldn't be further from the truth as you and I know.
so up in Chicago, I was a professional photographer. did live event photography, things like that. and my life sort of took, you know, took a turn where I had to decide what it is that I wanted to do next. I was. Leaning a lot of obstacles and really not making through any solutions. And so my folks had this property down in the hill country of Texas, arguably one of the most beautiful places in Texas actually. And,
They had retired down here. And so I thought, okay, well, maybe let's go to Texas. Let's see, right? Nothing is working in Chicago the way I would need to. Let's see. And so I ended up in Texas. And while I was here, I was trying to figure out what it is that I did. What would I do next, right? My typical photography work, there wasn't
Nick Otto (07:30.654)
you
Right.
Kriss Abigail (07:52.564)
anything of that in the middle of the country, you know, in the middle of nowhere where I was living. And so I really had to think about what it is that I wanted to do next. And like I said, my father has been a huge culinary influence. I grew up with him cooking, cooking shows, you know, we would go out to eat and he would test my flavor palates. So that was always kind of in the kitchen with him.
I said, okay, well, maybe I'll go be a chef. You know, I'll have like a cute little country restaurant. It'll be great. Not really thinking about the immense sacrifice and work that it takes to run a restaurant. So I went to the Culinary Institute of America here in San Antonio and I spoke to the guidance counselor and she said to me, well, if you've never worked in the restaurant industry, I highly encourage that you do so before you spend all this money in a very expensive education.
And so it was great advice. Yeah. Yeah. Someone who's like, you know, so probably, you know, the really a piece of advice that maybe was innocuous to her, but shifted sort of the course of my life. So I did that. went to work at a couple of restaurants and realized that that work was not for me. It was too chaotic. You know, it requires a lot of sacrifice, a lot of
Nick Otto (08:49.406)
That's a wise guidance counselor. Wish I had my guidance counselor say that to me.
Kriss Abigail (09:19.598)
Just a lot of work that I had come down to Texas for a quieter life, right? Which I didn't end up living anyway, but that's okay. I'm really happy about that. But I came across an ad that said, seasonal health needed for game processing. And I really, had no idea what game processing meant. I didn't understand. You know, for me, a game was like, I'm going to be testing video games for Christmas. That sounds kind of cool.
Nick Otto (09:29.214)
You
Kriss Abigail (09:50.03)
so I was reading in and it was like, deer processing. And the thing that got me was learn nice skills. And I was like, okay, I want to be a chef. I need to know nice skills. I had never butchered anything before in my life. You know, I had never delved really into any sort of connection with my food beyond what I bought at the grocery store line. Right. And that first season was.
just an awakening for me. When I could know, I couldn't separate the fact that we were making food out of these dead animals. You know, it was just constantly in my face of where our food actually comes from. And once I started learning the verbiage of in terms of what muscles are what, and the more I got to learn, the more it translated to meat that I was eating at the time, you know, beef and
work and the idea that they were these same cuts on this wild game, was just, it blew my mind. It really did. And then specifically, working with hunters, knowing that not only was I turning in animals and food, but I was doing it for this specific family. Like I was connected, I had the honor of doing this work for this family and they were entrusting me with
their food, right? Their food for the year. And that really touched me. I think that really ignited a passion in me of becoming a steward of those animals. You'll hear me a lot. I'll say that I'm honoring the hunt first and then I'm honoring the hunted just because I could never separate myself from the fact that it was an animal. I also say I'm a soft heart in a hard world, you know? So I wanted to do the best that I could
for these animals, honor their death, turn them into delicious food, and to do so for a specific family was frankly intoxicating in that way. And so there came a point in my career where I was processing wild game, I was a pit master in training at a local barbecue place, and I was also the sous chef at a wedding venue. And I had to decide between the three of what I really wanted to pursue
Kriss Abigail (12:15.618)
what really made me passionate. And I chose Wild Game because it challenged me, but it also kept me connected, right? That connection to our food, to where our food comes from, the admiration of the animals that we hunt, you know, to see just even from their anatomy and then taking those muscles and turning it into food and seeing that cycle always present.
I couldn't walk away from that. So that's where I hung my hat and I've been doing that for about eight years now here in Texas.
Nick Otto (12:55.518)
Wow. I am your connection that you were making there that not only do you see the animal, you see its grace, you see it moving, you honor its death, but at the same time you create a connection with the family that does bring it in. know, whether it be the family all bringing it in or it's, you know, the hunter that has successfully gotten this animal, he's bringing in with pride because
Kriss Abigail (13:15.629)
Right.
Nick Otto (13:25.53)
I now get to feed my family for an expended period of time. Like to be able to see both sides of that coin, to be able to say, Hey, I'm going to honor the animal, but I'm also going to make this customer, you know, if you've got to call it anything, you got to make this hunter happy with the product he's going to get on the other side. Like what a way to gel that whole idea that we think of here in Michigan, like processors, they, they have a big job to do. Are everything's within a season?
Kriss Abigail (13:26.68)
Yeah.
Nick Otto (13:55.786)
And it is flooded. And I'm sure you're the same way where when hunting season rolls around, the trucks are rolling in, the carcasses are stacking up, the tickets are seemingly endless, but you have that, that, that heart for that. That's, know, when your hands are cramping up, you've got, you know, claws instead of hands or that knife. You're like, my goodness, I can't remove it. It's stuck in my hand. Those moments you're dehydrated, you're tired, but
Kriss Abigail (13:59.8)
Mm-hmm.
Kriss Abigail (14:05.55)
Thank
Kriss Abigail (14:19.211)
man.
Nick Otto (14:25.66)
Your heart is filled with joy because you are doing such a service. love that poetry that you brought to, to being that meat cutter, being that, that processor of wild game and making a choice that, you know what, a wedding venue sous chef has got to be a rewarding experience because you're at weddings all the time. But at the same time, the, I don't know, the real drama that happens around wild game, it's.
Kriss Abigail (14:26.542)
You
Kriss Abigail (14:33.464)
Thank you.
Yeah.
Kriss Abigail (14:46.21)
Bye.
Nick Otto (14:55.29)
It's so fun. I've, I've been blessed to been hired by a couple of hunters that will bring me their stuff. You know, I'm not a big scale, processor, but I'll do a custom job for a buddy here or, you know, a friend of a friend or whatever in a pinch. And I always lead off with my question of like, how does your family eat? Like we can go so many different routes. Like I can go many different ways or I can, you know, follow a cut list.
Kriss Abigail (15:15.524)
that's wonderful.
Nick Otto (15:21.51)
And I can then give you a package back that looks just like the package did before. But at the same time, like how does your, how does your family eat more often than not? hear, well, I eat steaks and my family eats ground. And so to make sure that we do a great job at, know, finishing out what would ultimately be the end, just running meat through a grinder, but are, do they want it mixed with anything? Are we doing a great enough job of cleaning it, keeping it cold, running it through the grinder? Like.
Even that act of service is like, want to make it a best eating experience they can get, whether it's a burger or a chili, let's make that sucker sing because that family did work so hard. That gentleman or that lady worked so hard to bring that animal down. So I love how you brought that little bit of poetry that it's, it's a, it's an act of service.
Kriss Abigail (16:00.247)
Mm-hmm.
Kriss Abigail (16:05.089)
Absolutely.
Kriss Abigail (16:09.536)
Absolutely. Thank you. Hey, listen, if you're ever looking for a job, that's the same ethos that I run. I mean, that's the same question that I ask my hunters, right? It's like, OK, well, how does your family eat? And then beyond that is, what is it that you're curious about? A lot of times they don't really know. I have a pretty expensive menu, too, of things that they can get.
and guiding them through, well, what are your kids like? What do you like? It goes a long way towards making them trust that the end of product is going to be of high quality. Then you're absolutely right. Like even if I'm grinding a burger, okay, well, it doesn't matter. Like I want the meals that hunters make to wow them.
Right. And so I always feel like I'm setting them up for success. That's what I want to do. I want to set them up so that the meals that they're making out of the animal that they hunted are some of the best meals that they've ever had. Right. So there's joy in that sharing. And that really starts from when I received it at the loading dock and we had that conversation of like, how does your family eat? I had a hunter drop me off.
a buck that he had shot his first buck and he was trying us out for the first time and he said to me, well, you know, my brother is diabetic and all this is going to go to him. And so said, OK, well, I have sugar in some of my sausage recipes that you want. I'll omit the sugar. Right. So to that that level of what I call like bespoke butchery is important to me when it comes to hunters, because I do know
the amount of work, financial investment, especially you're talking about in Texas, we don't really have a whole lot of public land hunting. We're 97 % privately owned. So the likelihood is that in order to get this whitetail, this hunter had to pay a ranch a significant fee. So always thinking about the path they took to get this animal to me. And then once it hits its loading deck, then it becomes
Kriss Abigail (18:29.678)
my responsibility to steward this animal through the process of becoming a delicious meal for them when they come and pick it up, right? So we do everything possible as detailed as we can get it to the point where we put little, like little icons of what the animal is, you so we have like a little white tail sticker and a little elf sticker and things like that just to.
Just to give people this really personalized approach, I write personal thank you letters for all the hunters to thank them for bringing us, for entrusting us. Just because I'm so, passionate about that. And I didn't find that sort of connection. It's all about connection. The hunters come to me, I wanna connect with them. I wanna do a good job for them. Not just because it's my job, but there's real passion behind it.
have ethos behind it. You know, if this was my hunt, how would I want it to be treated? You know, I, you hear the stories, you know, I'm sure as your friends, right? Your friends are bringing you their deer, they hear the stories of the hunt, the things that they went through and you take on a little bit of that story. And it, and for me as I'm processing that story, sort of traveling with me and I'm thinking, he said he doesn't really like spicy things or, you know, he likes the thicker cut jerky, all those.
Tiny little details are for me a way of honoring the hunt in the same way as taxidermy is honoring a hunt. The butchery aspect to me is just an extension of that gratitude and that honor of this animal whose life you've taken in order so that you can have sustenance and feed your family.
Nick Otto (20:19.068)
Yes. Yes. Do you find, do you give the, if the round has not gone all the way through, I've had a couple of points where I've, guys have shot their animal and the bullet is sitting under the hide and it's sitting there, you know, just, and you, as you're gutting it out. so I'll, you know, they'll come for their box of mead or like, you know, we're vacuums up with them or they're cutting along with. And at the end of the night, I'm like, Hey, I found something that you left. I, you you hand them that bullet. I've seen more guys light up.
Kriss Abigail (20:29.592)
Mm-hmm.
Kriss Abigail (20:46.266)
I'm going to
Nick Otto (20:49.052)
Like, my goodness. left it right there. I lost this thing. I'm glad you brought that to me. Like I've seen more reaction of little totems and little finds like that in, in animals. Has that been something you've been able to do in, yours as you're bringing this ethos with it, you're bringing this whole experience. Like, do you find that people do get very excited when they do have these unique characteristics about their animal?
Kriss Abigail (21:03.746)
Yes.
Kriss Abigail (21:16.362)
Absolutely, I think that people do get excited about any sort of memento that they can take with them. That's going to bring back the memory of that day or the work that they did. Even for hunters, especially experienced hunters, they might want to see the bullet because they want to see what kind of damage it did or how it...
impacted because they're using a new type of grain or all those things like that are things that we do take into consideration. If we do find a bullet or we find a broadhead, we will return it to the hunter. They love it. They're very excited about it. so it's really, I think that because deer processing is not regulated, which I love,
Right, because that really allows you to not involve anyone else, it's just your processor or your customer. But I think that there should still be sort of a standard in terms of how processors are handling animals. You know, we can talk about what we call batch processing versus individual processing.
Because as you mentioned up in Michigan and in Texas right now during whitetail season, even though you can hunt year round in Texas, whitetail season is insane. You know, we are slammed. And the solution that a lot of processors take, which I have, there's no fault in that, is that they'll deal with called batch processing. Right? So they'll intake all these animals and they all get processed at the same time. And then the hunter just gets
whatever they've ordered. So they can bring in a small dough and still get 50 pounds of summer sausage, 30 pounds of burger meat, when we all can see that that gut shot dough or shelter shot dough will not provide that amount of yield. And they do that because they have to get through, right? They have to get through the season. Oftentimes,
Nick Otto (23:15.038)
You
Kriss Abigail (23:25.612)
That is the only time they're open. That's when they make their money to be able to operate year-round. So I used to be less compassionate about that approach because it directly contradicts my personal ethos. But I think there's room for everyone. I just think that hunters should be educated consumers and know if they're going to a processor that does back-processing,
their meat is going to be mixed up with others. And why that's a problem, you know, personally for me is you don't know what kind of aftercare, right? That's why we're not regulated because we can't control what happens from the field to our receiving doc. And so how someone has presented aftercare, how they've traveled with the animal, you know, just how they've taken care of it does impact
the final product. And when you're doing batch processing, you don't have that control of the product that you're going to receive. And then as a hunter, you don't get a realistic view of what the yield of your animal is. my work is individual processing. It's slower work. It's frankly more expensive work. You know, like I said, it's very custom, very bespoke butchery.
Nick Otto (24:49.576)
Yeah.
Kriss Abigail (24:53.56)
But it does guarantee that the animal that you chose, right, to hunt that you took good care of or you did whatever aftercare you had for it, that that's the animal that you're getting back. And in addition, it teaches hunters what the realistic yield is. If you bring me a dirty gut shot deer, I'm going to process it for you because I want to honor that animal, right?
But then we're going to have a conversation about, hey, there was a loss of meat because of the condition it was received or because you got it shoulder shot or hey, I can't do your backstrap hole because you shot it in the spine. There's no judgment. Like here's the realistic field of your animals, something to think about the next time you go out in the field. So I really want to create educated hunters, educated consumers so that they can continue to either, you
process on their own or really know what they want when they go to a processor. I think it'll make it a lot easier too for processors to have sort of educated hunters in that way.
Nick Otto (26:07.462)
Wait, wait, Chris, my, my deer was, it was a huge deer and you're telling me it's all in this box. This little box. This is all, all of my whole deer. cannot be. you are, you hit the nail right on the head with that. And what a talk, talk about a double edged sword that again, for a hunter to come in and to have the.
Kriss Abigail (26:12.27)
Yeah.
Nick Otto (26:35.954)
the prowess or to have the, entitlement to say, like, I brought you a, a 75 pound animal. want 75 pounds of meat back without any consideration of, of bone, of fat, of meat loss. But at the same time too, where, where they're bringing in an animal, the care that was given that, know, the little bit of meat loss that you're going to get from the shot area. Hey,
Kriss Abigail (26:46.819)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Otto (27:02.76)
We're going to take your, you you wanted 20 pounds or whatever. Hey, we're going to take 20 pounds of your good meat and throw that into a batch where we can make summer sausage. I don't want mine all mixed into the thing. Well, here, okay. Let's switch. Let's switch roles. All right. You make this for each individual customer and they're going to want that done ASAP. They want that done right now. You're you'd have somebody doing that custom order, just like you're, you have somebody there every day.
Kriss Abigail (27:27.342)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Otto (27:33.362)
probably before and after opening of the shop that it's such a detail that you're going to, you know, start it up, clean the machine out, put it back together, run it again, make your sausage, have all these custom orders. But then at the same time, let's flip that role. You become a shop owner. You're trying to take care of your employees. You don't want to burn people out. You don't want them hurt. You don't want them overworked. And even as the owner yourself, you're like, I got to find an economic way. Like.
Kriss Abigail (27:55.342)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Otto (28:01.746)
batch processing is a way to make ends meet. I have a package of seasoning for 50 pounds. I now have to do a math equation to figure out how much of that seasoning is going to go into this batch, how much seasoning is going to into this batch. Why don't I just take it all and make the 50 pounds that this is asking for. So I don't think anybody would necessarily fault you for the idea of batch processing, but the approach that you're taking of
Kriss Abigail (28:28.835)
right.
Nick Otto (28:31.566)
educating the hunter as they come in to this is your animal. Yes, that little box, that little box is your animal. These are lean athletes. I don't know if you realize that these things do not just sit around and get fat like the hogs we see in the stockyards or the cattle that are just just roaming around. No, no, these things have to survive. They have to fight for the rights.
Kriss Abigail (28:40.775)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Kriss Abigail (28:51.427)
Yeah.
Nick Otto (28:59.784)
to property, their does, to does having their own area. These things are fit and trim for a reason. So when you do get them, that fat cap, there's not a whole lot there. And especially down in Texas where that thing's 24 hours a day. I think it's shocking to people to see that. Again, having my buddies come in and drop their deer off for the first time, they're like, well, I've always just dropped it off.
Kriss Abigail (29:03.927)
Yeah.
Kriss Abigail (29:19.086)
Yeah.
Nick Otto (29:28.818)
You know, I want to, I want to learn something. And so you put a knife in their hand and as they start working away at it, they're like, I, I didn't get a whole lot off this rib section. Like, no, no, you didn't get a whole lot, but we're going to glean every bit. We're going to get every meatball we can out of it. And then, you know, when they did shoot it in the shoulder, you hand them that shoulder, like, Hey, clean, clean that one up for me. And let me, let me know what you came up that one. Experiential learning. like to put that that's, learned by hard knocks.
Kriss Abigail (29:45.505)
Absolutely.
Kriss Abigail (29:50.248)
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that's really why. sorry. Yeah. Well, I say that that's why I really started to do like, hunt camp education, you know, you talk a little bit about that, because I really feel that.
Nick Otto (29:58.568)
But that's a great project you give as a prop. So go ahead.
Kriss Abigail (30:17.102)
A lot of the hunters I know had that sort of experience, know, even friends of mine that are hunters where they were like, we just dropped it off at the processor and then we picked it up when it was a box, but we don't really have a whole lot of experience even like with bedding or like quartering or anything like that. And to me, that does a disservice to the hunter, right? I firmly believe that everyone should know how to butcher their animal. I tell folks,
roll it into your hunt plan. If you're planning on butchering your animal, give yourself that time, the same time that you give yourself at the range, the same time you do the research to get the right rifle, the right ammo, the right gear, find a place to hunt, prepare for your hunt, pack for your hunt, all those parts of your hunt plan, the butchery aspect of it is just as important. You don't have to process every animal, but you should know how.
You should know that labor. You should know what it's like to clean a blood shot up from a shoulder. Those experiences, I think, create better hunters overall, more knowledgeable consumers in terms of if they are taking you to get processed or even how to use their animal. Because there's a lot of that. It's a matter of we just grind it all up because we don't
We don't know what to do. You know, we don't know what cuts really truly exist. you know, I'd like to be able to say, Hey, let me, let me show you. And so that's really what I've dedicated the last few years of a, Hey, let me show you. I want you to know what cuts are available on your medicine. I want you to be able to find them on your own. I want you to have that experience, feel empowered by that, you know, forge, continue forging that connection.
to nature, the outdoors, to your stewardship, through your butchery. And then you can decide, hey, I did it once, I'm gonna take it to Casabiel the next time. I had a friend who I taught to butcher, and she butchers all her own, and I think that's wonderful. But then she got a Neil guy, which is a very large animal. And she called me, she was like, I think I need your help on that aspect.
Kriss Abigail (32:44.398)
So this idea that like hunter education costs like processing money or anything like that, it doesn't. What it does is that it creates hunters who are passionate and who are knowledgeable and who know what's up and then can have these conversations with their butcher, right? They can come to me and say, hey, I really want a sirloin tip roast or, you know, I
really like this kind of meat. Having that vocabulary just as you do with the rifles you're choosing or the gear that you're wearing. Having that butchery vernacular is important to hunters. And that's the knowledge that I'm just so desperately trying to give away anywhere I can.
Nick Otto (33:36.199)
Absolutely. taking that last little bit that you were just, you were speaking about putting the time and effort into the butchery, into the processing of that animal. This is a, like you want to talk about a hunting story. Like that story doesn't end until it's on the table. Like, or, and at that point, like that story is going to keep getting retold, retold every meal that it's a being a part of, but.
Kriss Abigail (34:01.934)
Yeah.
Nick Otto (34:04.36)
How many, how many times do folks take that and like, well, and then I got to the animal and I put it in the truck. The end, like, no, it goes on further from that. And I was going to segue this a little bit because then I had, my friends helped me on my first deer. Actually he's right here. A little forky here. He's, he's at every show that I do. That was my very first animal I took.
Kriss Abigail (34:15.054)
Mm-hmm.
Kriss Abigail (34:31.245)
wow.
Nick Otto (34:33.246)
Yeah, my very first buck that I took. And so they helped me turn that. They called them, what do they call them? Giblets. And like we cut like little pieces that were too small. Like they were like, that's a keeper piece. Like I thought they knew they did not know. So that began my saga of like, I got to figure this out. And it wasn't until the following year that all that, that I don't want to say press. Well, yeah, pressure and weight.
Kriss Abigail (34:36.91)
huh.
Kriss Abigail (34:53.82)
I'm
Yeah.
Nick Otto (35:03.122)
that I was going to then do this. I'd been a part of meat processing before I grew up doing two legged critters, doing turkeys, but then I had to do, I got a doe the next year and now it was rubber meets the road. And I remember I had already had her hung up and I was beginning to skin her. I dropped my knife and I bent down and I picked up or I looked up and I was eye to eye with that doe.
And yes, the animal was already dead and that, there was, was nothing really about that animal, but I just felt this, this calling. I really think it was the Lord trying to make me aware of it, that it's go time. Like you, this is a test that you were going to do. You were going to take care of this animal. And I could just feel like the emotions well up that I had taken this animal. I was meeting it face to face. I was.
in the moment there of I had put in the work and now I want to see how that thou develops. And from that, we, I mean, my wife and I enjoyed that entire doe that year, which then sparked on me becoming more of a hunter, getting multiple tags and being able to take these animals and make it a real part of our, our family. And that's where I wanted to turn that, that segue in is to you've, you've been leading a little bit.
on the ethos and the tale and your experience of, your own brand that you've created. Meet your meat. Tell me about that brand specifically. I know we've talked a little bit about that already. but how does, how does that play? How does meet your meat? Is that that's the, the meeting of the customer, the hunter and the animal altogether in one. Is that the feeling you were going for with that brand?
Kriss Abigail (36:56.396)
Yeah, the feeling behind me, so Meet Your Meat started, think, the year where everybody's life shifted, which was 2020, right? I was pretty securely in the country. Things didn't really shut down for us. know, we were still able, I was still processing. That year, over a million licenses were sold in Texas. We were slammed. That was an insane deer season.
Nick Otto (37:23.358)
you
Kriss Abigail (37:26.006)
And what I started noticing was that my friends back in Chicago and just like in other urban cities were panicking about there was no meat on the shelves. Where are we going to get our food? How are we going to eat? Like what is happening? And there was this resurgence in, know, quote unquote victory gardens and sourdough baking. And yet the meat part was still
Like there was a gap there. And so I decided to, it was just like, Me or Me was just a cute little hashtag alliteration, right, to make my friends giggle, but to kind of put a funny spin on butchery, right? And so what I started doing is that I started showing pieces of animals, know, parts, muscles before they came to food and said, this is where your fajitas come from.
or this is what a top round looks like. This is the sirloin steak. The back strap on the deer is the same as a New York strip, a ribeye and a chuck eye on the beef, right? To try to bridge that education gap that I saw. And that turned into a more intentional education
When I started doing, I did a couple of dinners up in Chicago where on one of them I actually took some access to your wild game up there. And in the middle of the city, in the middle of this neighborhood, I butchered it to an audience of non-hunters and folks who had never seen anything butchered before. And then a chef friend of mine created this incredible like seven course meal and we ate this wild animal.
And that experience to me...
Kriss Abigail (39:26.83)
really solidified in me this idea of that we are so disconnected from where our food comes from that how can we possibly stay connected to each other? You know, we firmly believe that you are what you eat, you don't know what you're eating, and how do you truly know who you are and what you stand for? And I wanted to invite people to be uncomfortable and feel growth and that discomfort, right?
It's like if I can sit through watching an animal be butchered and on the other side of that, I know that there is this reward of this delicious meal. What other hard thing can't I do? What other hard conversation can't I do? So I really wanted people to invite people to really think about their relationship to their food. If you're so uncomfortable watching an animal get butchered.
that you can't eat it, then maybe it's time to rethink how much meat you're eating. I wanted to drive home the point that if you eat meat, you are responsible for the stewardship of that animal because that is a life that we are taking. There's no diet that doesn't involve death, right? There's no such thing as ethical consumption.
So wanted to start rewriting the narrative of both what hunting is and what hunters can look like. And so from that aspect, I really started building Me and Me to be an intentional education part of my brand, right? It's not custom butchery. do that at Alamo very happily. So Me and Me is more about, okay, let's have these conversations about what conservation stewardship look like, what hunting truly means.
to the health of our wildlife, our wild spaces, and then to let me empower people to move through that discomfort of butchering an animal and turning it into food, you know, with the hope that they are able to then do the hard things and then grow in community. So I started doing hunt camps, and that's really where my passion was ignited for novice hunters.
Kriss Abigail (41:44.46)
I've been very fortunate to work with experienced hunters. Most of my clients are experienced hunters. I've done work with an outsider from Oklahoma called The Way We Hunt down in Texas, and they do really wonderful educational hunt camps. And most of their hunters are experienced, which is always a really interesting experience. But with novice hunters, especially adult hunters, as I am one myself, it really resonated.
me of like, have this skill set that is pretty niche, it's pretty unique, and I really want you to know it. And so through all that, working through hunt camps, I started working with the Texas Wildlife Association, and they have this really fantastic program that's called the Adult Learn Hunt. And we take adult novice hunters
And we take them to these beautiful private ranches on locations where landowners have allowed us to come and help manage the herd populations. And so we take these hunters from A to Z. We'll take them from the range to skills trail where they'll learn how to track an animal to then having a mentor that's with them throughout the entire weekend to answer questions, to sit with them as their huntsman.
And then to have, you know, I'll teach the butchery demonstration where we're having a whole complete breakdown of an animal and this is how you can replicate this process at home. And then they get a culinary aspect of how to feed yourself with this animal, right? There's this idea that wild game is so daunting and so intimidating. And I really wanted to demystify it because as you well know, you can use it as a replacement for any sort of meat.
And so, or Meat has been steadily building on being a safe place for a butchery education, for questions about hunting, just to be like a resource for people to come and feel like they can really engage in these conversations. You know, I've really started to push the idea that we talk a lot about
Kriss Abigail (44:10.102)
our food system and how awful it is and what are the things that we need to do to change that. And so in that conversation, we bring up regenerative agriculture a lot. But I believe that hunting alongside regenerative agriculture is the path forward in terms of, you know, ethically, humanely and sustainably sourcing our meat. And so it's really become a passion of mine to start having those two
Just two phrases in a conversation, right? Where hunting does belong at the conversation as regenerative agriculture to rewrite that narrative of hunting as is like bloodthirsty sport to what it actually is, which is humane, ethical, sustainable wildlife management is conservation, you know, not just from the financial aspect that hunters pay taxes on, you know, but also the
the idea that like, especially in Texas, landowners have a financial reason to keep these herd populations healthy and to keep these places wild. So there's this idea that hunters don't contribute, right? And that we take, and the reality is that hunting is less impactful on our food system.
and a great steward of our wild places. And so I've really tried to take meet near meet kind of in that direction as both an educational resource for people and also as an advocate for hunting as stewardship and conservation of our planet. And so those are the two main pillars I think that I've
put behind the ear meat as it's grown over the years and I can hope to continue to nourish. do these clinics and I'm actually, this will be after your pot has come out so I would have already done this clinic. But I've partnered, you'll have to come to the next in next year. So I've partnered with the San Antonio Food Bank and the San Antonio Food Bank here in Texas has a unique
Nick Otto (46:19.422)
Well, bummer folks, you'll have to go to next one.
Kriss Abigail (46:33.602)
facility on site that's called Casa Venado. And Casa Venado is the only wild game processing facility at a food bank in the nation. And what they will do is that hunters or manage land deer ranches will donate deer to the food bank that then gets processed and handed out to the community. The San Antonio Food Bank covers about 26 counties in Texas. So you have all these communities.
that don't hunt and that may not have access to venison, getting nutrient rich, healthy food. And so in that way, hunters are providing an alternative to our food system, just the same way as it would be if you were to buy from your local rancher. So that's kind of, that's my pulpit at the moment.
Nick Otto (47:33.264)
love that soap box, love that pulpit. it's our, our thing right now, my, my son went to, he went to the dump on a field trip. It sounds terrible, but it was also the recycling. It was the dump and the recycling center. And it was, he, I mean, he had an amazing time. He loved seeing all the equipment, you know, pushing normal trash around and getting it covered, but he learned about how a landfill works.
Kriss Abigail (47:47.406)
Now it's a-
Nick Otto (48:03.006)
He also saw like what recycling was and how those things get processed again into something else. So they saw the sorting area and then they went and they were learning about like the like stuff from your kitchen shouldn't come to the landfill because it creates the methane. You have a problem, yada, yada, yada. They had a whole thing in there, but he was like, so we got, he always, you know, nothing from the kitchen can go like he was on, he was on a thing for it. So it started us like.
Kriss Abigail (48:28.206)
you
Nick Otto (48:30.461)
Well, shoot, we've, we've composted before, but not really within purpose. And now we got, now we got this seven year old who thinks we got to do all of it. All right, here we go. Let's do all of it. So we've been doing a little bit of that, but really that's opened even my eyes to at the amount of, of food waste that does happen in our food system. we, we give status to each of these cuts, whether it's high on the hog, whether it's high on the beef, these stakes, you can, you know,
Kriss Abigail (48:40.878)
That's awesome.
Nick Otto (49:00.626)
Restaurants will buy this, but they won't touch shanks. They won't touch soup bones. They won't touch Chuck. well, I shouldn't say Chuck anymore because now, you know, barbecues that's taken over. so people are using more with that. the idea of a hunter that then brings the animal to you, you're not going to teach them necessarily, Hey, here's how you create a good steak. No, you, you got to eat this animal head hoof the whole gamut and each of those muscles.
Kriss Abigail (49:04.375)
Yeah.
Kriss Abigail (49:18.443)
Mm-hmm.
Kriss Abigail (49:27.117)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Otto (49:30.302)
serve a different purpose, whether it's the neck that's getting moved every day versus the tenderloin that kind of gets agitated a little bit here and there, they're going to cook different. You're going to have a different eating experience with each of those. A hunter's going to experience all of that. Whereas a restaurant buys 30 rib eyes, there's not 30 rib eyes on one cow. So now they got to kill two cows to fill that order.
Kriss Abigail (49:38.552)
Yeah.
Kriss Abigail (49:46.883)
Yeah.
Kriss Abigail (49:55.277)
Yeah.
Kriss Abigail (49:59.532)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Otto (49:59.92)
And they got to then move all that around versus a hunter that then is going to enjoy. He's got investment. She's got investment into that animal versus the, you know, the steak they get at a restaurant. Ooh, it's like a roller coaster ride. doesn't stick with you. But now that hunter's got investment, whether it's going to even be a duck, like, you can get two meals out of this little duck, but you know what? Those are two meals that you're going to talk about for that whole year. You know, and
You get an access deer, you're to tell these stories over and over again. And you're going to, you're going to use each of those pieces with high esteem. you're looking forward to, well, we made this asobuko out of the shank or we made Barbacoa, which I mean, the shank is, is my favorite piece of the animal. I, I absolutely love to braise those like the 21st of December that, that winter solstice I make, I, it's called the Poso it's, it's leaning towards.
Kriss Abigail (50:43.874)
Yeah.
Nick Otto (50:57.38)
Italian, but it's a, that's just wine and really a lot of black pepper with, with the shanks in that. it just turns into this sauce. That's just incredible. Throw that on mashed potatoes. And it's like for the coldest, darkest night of the year. That's, that's what I go with. want something that's going to stick with me. So that approach, like you're saying, like as much as it is an education, yeah. On how to hunt the animal. Yeah. How to take care of the animal, but there's going to be some.
Kriss Abigail (51:03.438)
Hmm.
Kriss Abigail (51:11.341)
that sounds so good. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Otto (51:27.122)
bigger conversations that are going to happen. Yes, this one animal did die, but you're going to take that animal home and it's going to feed your whole family. However long it's going to take you to eat it. And I guarantee you kill that animal. You experienced the butchery. You're not going to let freezer burn stop you from keeping that burger. You're not going to let a little break in the seal and lose a little bit of vac stop you.
Kriss Abigail (51:29.966)
you
Kriss Abigail (51:48.854)
Absolutely.
Nick Otto (51:56.542)
from consuming it because you're invested into that. Heck, it's gonna start making you make stock. You're gonna start keeping the fat and doing other stuff because you have that investment. So meat, your meat is awesome.
Kriss Abigail (52:09.39)
Absolutely. And I think it, yeah, and I think it takes meals back to what we were talking about at the beginning. Right. Where are we talking about Thanksgiving? It turns every meal into like a little micro Thanksgiving, right? Because you are so grateful for the animal and you are proud of the work you did and you can't wait to share with your family. There's really, you know, we talk about like the hunting narrative.
There's no one more generous with meat than a hunter. You're going to go to like a hunter's house, you're likely going to walk out with some sausage or you're going to get fed well, or you know, you're going to walk home with some ground meat because it has, it's such a empowering, emotional, connective experience. I was speaking with a friend of mine earlier, Katie Hill, and she's an outdoor journalist, but she's hunter in her own right.
And we were having these conversations about food being a ritual of sorts, and these meals, and the importance of honoring them, and using the animal, and having that experience of gratitude. When you hunt an animal, when you kill anything, when you kill a life, it's
all of the emotions you've ever felt all at once just crashing into you. And the two biggest takeaways, know, in my conversation with Katie that we came to is that you never feel more human or more plugged in, right, to the natural world, to the order of things, to our purpose, to our stewardship. And all that is
I tell my hunters, know, the hunters I teach them, give yourself the gift of the labor. Like give yourself the gift of the hard work. You already did so much hard things to get to that point. hardest thing you did was you took a life, right? That's always an emotional experience, regardless of the circumstances as it should be. And then, but then give yourself the gift.
Kriss Abigail (54:28.808)
of doing the labor afterwards, of doing that work and showing that you not only can do it, right, but you have now been the only source of connection to that food that's going to feed the people you love. And there's so much beauty in that and there's so much generosity and compassion and giving in that. When you do take it from point A.
to point Z. And the idea is then, okay, you've done this thing, let's create and let's continue this hunting journey, right? Let's talk about it, let's bring other people in full, let's help rewrite that narrative because now you've had that experience. It's different if I have the experience and I tell you about it, right? But if you give yourself the gift of that labor, then when you talk...
to non-hunters and we talk to your friends who are not really into it, especially not as hunters, who may be coming from many paths in the world and they're going back into a world that may not have a lot of non-hunters, the way that they speak about their experience is important to the overall narrative. So if you're giving yourself that gift of that work, you're going to inevitably come through it with a lot of
pride and humility and gratitude. I think that just makes them better person, right? A better member of the community. So.
Nick Otto (55:59.976)
I'm going to give that analogy to my sons. The gift of labor. Fellas, you will appreciate things much more if you carry all of these stones. If you stack the firewood. It absolutely is.
Kriss Abigail (56:04.302)
You
Kriss Abigail (56:11.84)
Absolutely. But it's true, right? It's true because I think that we have lost a sense of purpose in our society a lot, you know, especially coming from an urban center and then moving to a very rural part of Texas. The two worlds could not be more different. And in a city, we live very clean, sanitized,
convenient lives. A lot of that hard labor has been done for us. And then we don't know truly how resilient we can be, you know, physically, emotionally in hard times, because we don't have hard times. Right? And out here in the rural country, it's like we have to be stewards of our water because we don't want our well to go dry. If our car breaks down, if things happen, if there's an animal
You know, your livestock needs to be dispatched. There's all these things where you have to do that hard work so that you know that you can, that you are resilient. and it does, it builds character, you know, there's, it's empowering. It really truly is. like when somebody, when I can put a knife in a hand of somebody who's never butchered before and they're able to do something, they're able to butcher their own animal. Like I love when my hunters will
call me or text me or send me a photo of what they did at home because I know how proud they are and how that feeling of being able to do something you thought you could never do, it will reverberate throughout your whole life of things that you thought that maybe you couldn't do or spaces that you thought you couldn't occupy. I don't look like what you would think of a wild game butcher.
I'm aware of that and so the hope is that my platform will also give people that encouragement to enter the outdoor world, right? Or to enter any world that they might are curious about, but feel like, I don't see anyone else like me. And it's like, no, it's like, just go and do it. Just go and be curious and give yourself challenges to overcome.
Kriss Abigail (58:39.022)
and see truly what you're capable of. And I do think that that kind of mindset does create more empathetic and better members of our overall community. We're not so isolated in that way.
Nick Otto (58:59.334)
I well said, well said. I have you, have you ever connected with a woman by the name of Kate Kavanaugh? She has a podcast. Okay. She's got a podcast. I was just looking it up here for a second, I made her, but she's got a podcast, but she was also the creator of Western daughters. butchery Western daughters meat shop anyway, but it's, it was in Colorado, but just as you were talking about.
Kriss Abigail (59:08.871)
No, I don't believe I have.
Kriss Abigail (59:25.39)
okay.
Nick Otto (59:29.158)
the gift of labor and how it's yeah, it's hard work, but how, how that then resonates through not only your mind, but then your body and then even your spirit. I, the two of you just jive so much. yeah, side note, I'm going to connect you with her at some point. You guys are running on that same path, but Chris, this has been such an encouraging time, both me as a, as a hunter and someone who has taken on the challenge of
Kriss Abigail (59:44.142)
of course, thank you. Yeah.
Nick Otto (59:58.11)
processing my own wild game and helping others understand what to do. It's so inspiring and so refreshing to hear that it's more than cut here and do this and take silver skin off. You do have those. You do need that skill set. But to have these bigger conversations of we as humans around a cut table, not just around a dinner table, but we're around
Kriss Abigail (01:00:15.15)
Mm-hmm.
Kriss Abigail (01:00:20.418)
necessarily.
Nick Otto (01:00:27.228)
you know, whether it's a butcher block, whether it's a steel table, whether it's the, the really nice poly plastic that I'm hoping to get one for my table, whatever the media that that's where these deeper conversations have that this is death becoming life. Essentially we're the same. It's not going to get, not come back to life, but it's going to live. That energy is going to then consume into us. And then we that to bring glory to that. So.
Kriss Abigail (01:00:35.785)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Kriss Abigail (01:00:44.63)
Absolutely.
Kriss Abigail (01:00:53.537)
Absolutely.
Nick Otto (01:00:55.976)
This has been so awesome. Chris, I want to end though, my friends and I, it's actually the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we save all the hearts from our deer. Whether, know, well, if it's a heart shot, and of course that one doesn't get used, but we save them from archery season. We save them from gun season and we try to get them all together. And we have been really passionate about heart tacos.
That is our go-to. We're a bunch of Michigan guys trying to figure out Southwest flavors and how to make tacos. doing our best here, Chris, but you know, we introduced, we got, we did get the crumbly cheese. We did go with that. Do you cilantro, white onion. We got rid of the yellow onion. do white onion. Help me out with a marinade to help those.
Kriss Abigail (01:01:25.486)
Hello?
Kriss Abigail (01:01:36.814)
You
Kriss Abigail (01:01:42.51)
Okay. Okay. Good.
Kriss Abigail (01:01:53.581)
Okay.
Nick Otto (01:01:54.066)
those steak, cause what I end up doing, taking the vessels off, taking the outer pericardium off, and then I'll score it like a little hex pattern just so that marinade works in a little bit further. And then we put it right there on a griddle. I ended up slicing it real thin and it goes into a tortilla. How can I up my marinade? What, what should I be putting into that marinade? And what is a top condiment that I need to add to that?
Kriss Abigail (01:01:58.156)
Okay.
Kriss Abigail (01:02:05.367)
Mm-hmm.
Kriss Abigail (01:02:16.215)
Well.
Okay, so I'll give you a cheat marinade, which means that you should be able to get it at the grocery store. Goya makes it. It's called Mojo, M-O-J-O, Creel. Yeah, C-R-I-O-L-L-O.
Nick Otto (01:02:23.336)
I love it.
Nick Otto (01:02:41.039)
O-L-O. Beautiful.
Kriss Abigail (01:02:43.64)
So that is a already prepared marinade. I will typically use it on hog and white meats. But I think it would really translate well to heart, especially if you're doing a taco with cilantro and onions and the crumbly cheese. has notes of orange. So it's an orange-based marinade.
and it has a bunch of different spices that I think are great. I would say that anything to up your marinade game is I think oranges really work well to be a kind of like sweet and tangy flavor that takes people by surprise. Cause it doesn't necessarily have like a very big orange taste, but there's a taste that you're like, what is that? That's interesting. So that would be my tip is to, is if you make your own marinade,
Just like add a slice or a couple of slices of oranges in there. And that will really help, I think, bring out that heart flavor.
Nick Otto (01:03:48.008)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Otto (01:03:52.36)
Good deal. I keep adding the lime, but at the same time, I like where you're going with, with that orange, where it's now, yeah, we've got the sour, you got the bitter, but then to add like the notice sweet in there. Ooh, that would be good. All right. Here's my marinade down. Good deal. I've, we've been doing, we do pickled radish. We did the white onion. We did the cilantro and then you have the squeeze of lime.
Kriss Abigail (01:03:57.356)
Mm-hmm.
Kriss Abigail (01:04:01.015)
Yeah.
Kriss Abigail (01:04:06.294)
Yeah, it's so good. Yeah. There you go.
Kriss Abigail (01:04:14.402)
Yeah.
Kriss Abigail (01:04:17.923)
Thank
Nick Otto (01:04:20.784)
Anything else that's going to throw us a loop. should we be adding?
Kriss Abigail (01:04:21.622)
Man, that sounds so good.
Kriss Abigail (01:04:25.814)
I think you guys are on the right path because that sounds so tasty. like, I want to come to Heart Taco Night. I think that sounds great. Thank you. Thank you.
Nick Otto (01:04:33.65)
You are welcome to come, Chris. It is, it's a great time. yeah, it is a bunch of dudes hanging out in a cabin. we used to do deer camp. We're, all dads. we all have full time jobs and our hunting happens near our homesteads. So as much as we were like, Hey, let's get away and do deer camp. Like our phone was constantly blowing up. Hey, when you get out of the stand, you need to run to the grocery store or pick up so-and-so.
Kriss Abigail (01:04:44.387)
huh. Okay.
Kriss Abigail (01:04:52.045)
Yeah.
Kriss Abigail (01:04:57.75)
Nick Otto (01:05:03.506)
getting out of the stand. So there was always a tension. had to, became instead of deer camp, it became beer camp. So we just hang out. have a bunch of beers and make art tacos.
Kriss Abigail (01:05:06.028)
Yeah!
Kriss Abigail (01:05:11.918)
Beer and heart tacos, that sounds like a good time to me.
Nick Otto (01:05:18.396)
Yep. It's it, you know, we live in Michigan, but I think it has a feel of Texas. We bring that into it. Well, beautiful. You've set us up to that. Chris, where can my listeners get a hold of you? Where can they continue on and, you know, ask you questions or where can they see your content? Where's the best way or shoot, even join in with one of your classes? Where can my listeners go?
Kriss Abigail (01:05:22.562)
Yeah. Okay. Sexist travels with you wherever you go.
Kriss Abigail (01:05:39.256)
Sure.
Kriss Abigail (01:05:45.184)
Yeah, absolutely. MeetYourMeat.net is my overall website. It'll have links. But I'm pretty active on my Instagram. So it's ChrisKaraSS underscore Abigail. Feel free to come along, send me questions, and watch my like wild meat adventures. It's a lot of fun. OK.
Nick Otto (01:06:08.99)
Well, Chris, hold on just a second. I'm going to let our listeners on out. Folks, man, this hour just flew by. I hope that as you've been able to engage on this episode that you do also feel, I don't know, whether you feel uplifted, whether you feel empowered, whether you feel like I'm going to take on cutting up my first year, or if you're already cutting up your first year, this just renews.
Kriss Abigail (01:06:14.936)
and
Nick Otto (01:06:37.15)
your dedication to the craft of breaking down that animal that was once living and be able to present it on a table that's going to bring glory to that animal. But at the same time, it's going to bring nourishment and fun and excitement to you and your family. So folks, as you go on from here, whether it's going to be getting that animal to a processor and doing a fine job on that field dress, or it's you actually getting into it and breaking down that shoulder.
Make sure that the knife you are using is very sharp.
